Hungry to fight after two years in the jungles of Thailand, Si Thu marched back to Burma with the All Burma Students’ Democratic Front in 1990. With six months’ schooling from medical students, he became one of three paramedics in a regiment of 30, who had been trained by sympathizers in the Burmese military.
Leaving the battleground
Though malaria and diarrhea were the main ailments, said Si Thu, their treatment was straightforward. Battle wounds, in contrast, varied wildly.
“When they get shot,” he said, “You look at it. If you can cut it out, you cut it out. If it’s a small one, you stitch it by yourself.”
Thu said the fledgling student army lost because they could not match the army’s superior arsenal.
“Some non-governmental organizations, they give us money for food. So we eat a little bit, and we buy ammo.”
Finding weapons in the region was no problem.
“[The] Vietnam War is just finished. There is a lot of arms, weapons, ammos, everything. Only thing you need is money. […] But we cannot buy all the time. One guy has only 200 ammo for one trip. So you finish that 200 ammos, then you run.
“Still, now, they have a lot of weapons in Vietnam. So all we need is money to buy them.”
However, seeing soldiers and dissidents dying side by side, Si Thu became disillusioned with warfare and decided to try other means of resistance. He left the student army and his native land to eke out a life in Bangkok, the capital of Thailand. He was 20 years old.
Refugee life
In Bangkok, he joined The New Era Journal, which is distributed to Burmese communities around the world and, covertly, in Burma. U Tin Maung Win, a dissident who was jailed from 1965 to 1968, began publishing the Burmese-language newspaper in 1993. Si Thu worked there for four years. .
But he grew weary of living as an illegal alien.
“The UN gives you money and refugee status, but the Thai government—no. Every time you went out, you think the police is going to catch you, you don’t know when. We have no country to live.”
“So I decided to apply to Canada and the United States. I got Canada, so I left.”
A friend in Toronto helped Thu get a job as an assembly line worker at a manufacturer of bathroom fixtures. He is now a supervisor there.
“I [got] a month’s vacation,” said Si Thu. “I don’t want to just sit home and watch television, I want to do something.”
Driving for Burma
“We are so close, to get the whole country uprising,” Si Thu said of last September’s pro-democracy protesters in Burma. The military junta cracked down, beefing up the army’s presence in cities, installing curfews, and detaining thousands of monks. State media reported nine deaths.
“But nothing happened. […] United Nations failed.”
En route to work one day, Si Thu spotted a Mississauga bus. “The whole side is advertising, and people are looking at it and talking about it…you know?”
He got an idea. “If I do it like this, people are going to be interested. I can spread the word and raise awareness.”
The month-long drive took an elliptical route, dipping down to the U.S. and returning to Canada in a clockwise direction. At a Vancouver gas station, a man approached Si Thu and asked, “Free Burma, what kind of company is that?”
“I was really surprised,” said Si Thu, chuckling. The man had immigrated from India, Burma’s neighbour to the northwest. “I asked him, ‘You don’t know anything about Burma?’
“He said, “No, since I got here, I’m working for my survival.’”
Si Thu received support from strangers, from the car wash customer in L.A. who gave $100 to the Sudbury mechanic who donated his work.
“Some of [the Burmese community] are here from a long time ago. They don’t want to involve in politics before. Now, after this September uprising, they are really changed. They are coming out, they show their face.”
Fighting violence without violence?
“Canadians can help us in peaceful ways, like don’t buy gas from Chevron,” Si Thu said. Chevron invested in a Burmese natural gas project before sanctions were imposed, making the U.S. corporation one of the few Western companies there. Calls for Chevron to pull out have fallen on deaf ears. Activists also accuse France of backing the junta’s oppressive rule to further its oil interests.
“We are like a virgin, nothing is touched. Everybody wants that,” said Si Thu of Burma’s natural resources. In addition to petroleum and natural gas deposits, the timber-rich country contains deposits of jade, rubies, and sapphires.
“The Canadians, they can help in peaceful way,” he repeated. “For us, most of us believe that we gotta fight ourselves.
“The non-violence way is going this way, I don’t know how long it’s going to take.
“But because people suffer over there, nothing to eat, so that’s why we said we’re going to fight, any way. We cannot wait for United Nations, we cannot wait for United States or Canada. Nobody’s going to help us, we have to fight it ourselves.”
He dismissed international sanctions out of hand. “It’s not affecting this military regime. […] They have weapons, they have arms, they’re going to kill us anyway. Why should I sit out here and wait for them to kill?” he said.
“I don’t want my country to be like Iraq,” he said, but added that the hopeless outlook of the Burmese people, especially its youth, inevitably leads to violence. When dissenters take up battle again, said Si Thu, “I have to go back to the borderline, to the Thai-Burma border, and fight from there, not from here.
“I would like to see [imprisoned Burmese pro-democracy activist] Aung San Suu Kyi get free. And all the political prisoners free. We want freedom of speech. We want to see the talk [between] the regime and the opposition.
“I don’t care about my life. I want to give my life for my country.”
